This invention relates to the packaging for transportation, storage and handling, of a plurality of rolls of magnetic tape and, more particularly, to a recyclable package for a stack of tape rolls which is essentially made of a biodegradable and reusable material.
Magnetic tape is used for magnetically storing audio, video or other information. Audio and video tape now typically is loaded into cassettes for the same after the cassettes are otherwise assembled. This tape may be blank or prerecorded with data defining the desired information. Tape suppliers provide the tape, in the form of tape rolls from which tape can be unwound, both to cassette manufacturers and to "duplicators" who record desired data on the same. Such tape rolls are shipped and/or stored in packaged stacks. In the past, the most widely used packages for such stacks have been neither reusable nor biodegradable. That is, prior art containers typically are of Styrofoam (a term which is becoming generic for expanded, cellular polystyrene). It is not biodegradable and the containers made of the same are too flimsy for reuse. While in theory a Styrofoam package is sometimes reusable, as a practical matter almost all Styrofoam packages end up in land-fills, taking up space.